on self respect and people pleasing

it’s not that the love you receive is fake. it’s that it is built on the parts of you that feel safest to reveal, so your relationships become echoes of your accommodations. you feel seen and held, but not known , or met . the reality is, being easy to love often means being hard to access.

softperception.substack.com • Who Are You When You’re Not Pleasing Anyone?

If I have learned anything from my study of empty consent, it is that I must turn on the lights and welcome every part of me into the room. If I want my yes to mean yes, there can be no locked doors in the house of me.

Melissa Febos • Girlhood

We flatter ourselves by thinking this compulsion to please others an attractive trait: a gift for imaginative empathy, evidence of our willingness to give. Of course we will play Francesca to Paolo, Brett Ashley to Jake, Helen Keller to anyone's Annie Sullivan: no expectation is too misplaced, no rôle too ludicrous. At the mercy of those we can not... See more

Joan Didion • On Self-Respect: Joan Didion’s 1961 Essay From the Pages of Vogue

Every decision we make is witnessed by the sitting observer within us; the part of ourselves that knows when we have honoured our word or betrayed it. This observer does not judge with external standards; it registers, with quiet certainty, whether we are living in alignment with our values or falling short of them. Over time, these observations... See more

They Convinced you to Love Yourself So you’d Forget to Respect Yourself

Lacking it, we deplete self-esteem, we become unanchored, disconnected from ourselves and the deeper sense of dignity that gives life meaning. It is not about grand gestures or public recognition, but about the everyday moments where we prove to ourselves that we are dependable and worthy of trust. The way we speak to ourselves, the standards we... See more

They Convinced you to Love Yourself So you’d Forget to Respect Yourself

people-pleasing is a way to avoid yourself. You don’t have to sit with the discomfort of pondering hard, unanswered questions when you preoccupy yourself with satisfying others. Pleasing others makes you feel important and useful—a convenient way to avoid the hard stuff within yourself. But when you confront and integrate what you are avoiding, you... See more

Isabel • you might disappoint people (and that's okay)

because the more fluent you become in other people’s needs, the harder it becomes to locate your own. you lose sight of where you end and they begin. you start performing yourself in ways that earn connection but cost authenticity. and eventually, the self you’ve constructed becomes a mask that sticks. and what you believe is peace and... See more

lina • who are you when you’re not pleasing anyone?

As a young woman I struck myself against everything—other bodies, cities, myself—but I could never make sense of the marks I made on them, or the marks they made on me. A thing of unknown value has no value, and I treated myself as such.

Melissa Febos • Girlhood

When we consistently follow through on our commitments, no matter how small, we reinforce a sense of integrity, of competence. Conversely, when we repeatedly neglect our own promises, we erode our self-respect, fostering guilt, disappointment, and a low self-esteem.

This is why self-respect is not something that can be granted to us by others; it is... See more